Ducks, Maple Leafs Have to Settle for a Tie : Hockey: Resurgent Ducks avert loss when Corkum sends game into overtime with late goal.

They matched body slams, slick stick-handling, luck and pluck for so long it was impossible to pick a winner. In the end, the Mighty Ducks and Toronto Maple Leafs couldn’t break free of each other and went home tired and tied, 3-3, Friday night at The Pond.

A sellout crowd of 17,174 watched Toronto lose a 3-2 lead in the final seconds of regulation when Duck forward Bob Corkum scored to send the game into overtime.

“(Friday) and Calgary (a 5-0 victory on Wednesday) were probably the best we’ve played,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “We’ve had back-to-back solid efforts. That’s seven straight excellent periods for us. We’ve just got to build on it.”

The Maple Leafs broke a 2-2 tie when Dave Andreychuk scored a power-play goal with less than seven minutes left. Standing behind the goal line at the right of the net, Andreychuk banked the puck off a tangle of bodies in front and past a stunned Guy Hebert.

Toronto couldn’t make the lead stick, however.

The Ducks pulled Hebert for an extra skater with 1:15 left in regulation and buzzed the Toronto net until Corkum redirected Paul Kariya’s slap shot from the right circle into the net with 35 seconds left.

The goal that gave the Maple Leafs a brief, 2-1, third-period lead came from an unlikely source. Former King Warren Rychel scored on a breakaway at the 2:53 mark, his first goal as a Maple Leaf and only his 17th career goal. He did push his career penalty minutes to 714, however.

Moments later, the Ducks countered with Bobby Dollas swatting the puck into the net as he was falling to the ice with Rich Sutter draped on his back.

By the end of the second period, each team had scored on its best chance, each had a goal from one of its top scorers, each seized command for short stints and each showed its gritty side.

Toronto’s Mats Sundin slid a rebound past Hebert at the 13:50 mark of the first period for his team-leading 14th goal, giving the Maple Leafs a 1-0 lead.

Sixty-three seconds later, Duck forward Stephan Lebeau picked up a pass from Kariya, slipped through the defense and beat goaltender Damian Rhodes between the pads for the equalizer. It was Lebeau’s fifth goal and sixth point in the past five games.

Rhodes started his second consecutive game in place of regular goaltender Felix Potvin. Potvin had a rocky game in Toronto’s 4-1 loss to the Kings on Monday and Burns has given Rhodes, who was sound in Wednesday’s 3-1 victory over San Jose, a chance to prove himself.

The remainder of the first 40 minutes featured some hard hitting with scoring chances few and far between.

Lebeau had a second goal wiped out when he batted in a lose puck with a high stick midway through the second period.

Duck Notes

Pat Burns went into the game needing one victory to record his 100th as Maple Leaf coach. Five others have reached the milestone in team history, topped by Dick Irvin with 216. . . . Going into Friday’s game, the Ducks were 0-12-1 when they scored less than three goals. They were 4-0-1 when scoring four goals or more. . . . Todd Krygier, who has five goals and three assists in the last 10 games, remained sidelined with a groin injury. Oleg Tverdovsky (pink eye), Tom Kurvers (sprained left wrist) and Randy Ladouceur (bruised left ankle) also did not dress.